Reviews in chronological order (Total 6 reviews)

Submitted by Noodle on 07/09/2005 14:01

After the wonderfully refreshing Elephant, this was a crushing disappointment. Two hours of a guy moping around and mumbling, and occasionally changing his clothes. The film doesn't tell a story, it doesn't give any insight into the character, it doesn't add a new perspective. There's no point to this film aside from gross self-indulgence. The film is beautifully made and very well performed - but cinema needs more than technical excellence. Last Days does not engage the audience, it ignores it. The opening credits to the film come at the very end, almost as if the whole film was an introduction, and the real movie comes afterwards. Perhaps that is what Gus Van Sant intended all along?

Submitted by Michael on 25/08/2005 08:59

This is one of those films that can be used as a barometer for pretentiousness. Only people who really, really want to sound like they know about cinema will find anything good to say about it. Everyone else is likely to be bored shitless.

Submitted by Ali Catterall on 16/10/2005 15:56

Here's 97 minutes of your life you'll never get back - an excruciating exercise in watching cinematic paint dry, peel and flake. Blake, Michael Pitt's archetypal Kurt Cobain mooches around his decaying mansion, drooling into his smack, crackle 'n' pop and avoiding his leech-like friends before finally doing the audience a massive favour and blowing his brains out.
It's one thing to document ennui, another to render it halfway interesting. I wouldn't film myself picking lint out of my navel for an hour-and-a-half; Van Sant (whose previous outing Elephant was just as sleepy but often very lovely to look at) has just shot the equivalent. "It's a long, long journey from Death to Birth," sings Blake. And an even longer one from curtain rise to credits.

Submitted by Andy (Brussels) on 12/06/2005 12:33

After the majestic clinicism of Elephant Gus Van Sant returns with a gorgeous looking film that has little or no dialogue. The elegant, if not self-conscious, steadicam work has echoes of Stanley Kubrick. But the film, despite a poignant and powerful central performance, is a bit unambitious and after the first half-an-hour has nothing interesting or different to say about the events that are about to unfold. Although Van Sant attempts to make something great, he loses points for failing to do someting truly new.

Submitted by Boxpiece on 31/12/2005 03:49

I thought this was an astounding piece of work. The "Yellow Pages" salesman scence is hilarious. There's a beautiful passage when the friend and detective drive to the house which we view through the reflected windscreen of the car - wonderful. The whole thing gets the drug trippiness and consequences perfectly. Is there any other way we could have been led to even the remotest inkling of how anyone, let alone Blake / Cobain, can approach the the resolve to kill themselves?